chef abbey

santa brough abbey an easy bake oven for christmas! she loves to help people in the kitchen, and now she can make her own little confections (with adult supervision ;D).

she was so excited to start cooking!

she decided that she wanted to make a yellow cake with chocolate frosting. i measured the water for her and she got to dump everything in the bowl and mix it all up. (i helped mix a little, that stuff was pretty thick!)

here it is going into the oven and coming back out after the recommended 12 minutes, plus an extra 5 (i find that 100 watt bulbs aren't very efficient at cooking cake...). after it cooled, abbey loaded that sucker down with as much just-add-H2O "frosting" as she could. she was SO proud of herself! it tasted exactly like i expected it to taste, abbey thought it was the most delicious cake anyone every made. she's probably right ;D

i don't know where the pictures of the finished product went, i'll have to track them down. i'll post them as soon as i do...

happy christmas 2010!

we had a wonderful (and super busy) morning opening presents and playing with all of our new toys. the girls had a blast and henry was unbelievably patient for a 2 month old. i always love watching the kids open their presents and seeing how excited they are! christmas is awesome.

and that's all you're getting out of me today ;D pictures to come soon(ish)!

merry christmas!

8 weeks old

a quick trip...

we have been trying to get down to california to see dan's family for YEARS. i am not exaggerating, we haven't been since abbey was a year old. every time we've planned a trip, something has happened (broken car, sick children, pregnant wife, work emergency) and we haven't been able to go.

while we were eating lunch on saturday, danny asked me if we should make a quick trip down to california and surprise his mom for christmas, since he had 3 days off work. of course, i said yes. sunday morning we were running through the aiport with 3 "sunday best" clad children in tow. i think that this is the best way for our family to travel. spur of the moment. nothing can come up if we don't leave any time for anything to happen. unfortunately, that's not very realistic. oh, well.

we stayed with dan's parents (and sister's family and brother's family- that's 15 people in one house!) for 2 and nearly a half days. it was an absolute blast! we ate (mom is an AMAZING cook, and sis makes the cutest pancakes i've ever seen.), had a pre-christmas, stayed up late, took family pictures, laughed, played and hugged. i wish that we could have stayed longer, we didn't have nearly enough time to do everything we wanted to, but it was SO much fun and SO good to see everyone! we're planning on getting back in april (hopefully we can stay longer) and i can't wait to see everyone again!

festival of nativities

after church today, danny took us to see the festival of nativities. it was a very neat set up. there were different themed rooms: little bethlehem, joseph's workshop, living rooms, and the cultural hall had over 600 different nativities displayed. they've been doing this for 10 years up here and this is the first time i've gone. it was pretty amazing, i'm really glad that we went!


this is little bethlehem, it's an activity center for the primary kids. they get to dress up like characters from the christmas story and there are a ton of activities for them to do. there is a little manger, a story tent with a sweet little grandma reading christmas books, puzzles, puppets, toy nativities. it was so much fun!

ellie dressed up like a little angel, so sweet, she was adorable! i tried to get abbey to wear an angel costume, too, but she was dead set on being the camel!

this is the little manger they had set up. i was pretty impressed with the decorating going on in here. you can't tell from the pictures, but they went all out. all the walls were covered with fabric painted like stone walls or night scenes from a village and the ceiling was covered with dark blue fabric with stars painted on it and twinkle lights stuck underneath it so the sky glowed. it was really, very cool.

the girls playing in joseph's workshop, which was a little wood working and craft area. there were blocks to build with, a table to make ornaments out of popsicle sticks and buttons, and a cute old grandpa sat in the corner and did wood carvings.

i wish i'd gotten pictures of the "living rooms" and the nativities in the cultural hall, but there was a lot of glass and i needed my hands to keep the kids away from it. it was absolutely beautiful, though. if you're anywhere near vancouver next christmas, you should definitely check this out!

pancakes and belly buttons

today was my six week postpartum checkup (and my LAST visit to he mfms!). everything's normal, everything's good, and i am done with doctors!

now, on to the important things: pancakes. things have been understandably busy around our house the past six weeks and we haven't had a lot of opportunities to spend time all together in more than 10 or 15 minute chunks. usually danny and i juggle the kids and trade back and forth, everyone's schedules just aren't synced up yet. so, since we were all in the car (for my appointment), danny took us out to brunch at ihop! it was so much fun to go out as a family and relax and have fun without feeling rushed because we're late for something (which we usually are). thanks, danny! you're the best daddy!

side note: i am seriously in love with ihop pancakes. seriously. i've actually had a copy of the ihop pancake recipe for months, but i've been afraid to try it. what if i make them and they taste just like ihop's pancakes? then i would make them twice a day, every day, and we would all turn into pancakes.

also, henry is six weeks old today. but he doesn't look six weeks, this kid looks like he's pushing three months (i might be exaggerating a little). he's growing so fast! where did my baby go? i feel like abbey was a baby forever, but not henry. maybe it's because there's three kids now and my days are only about six hours long (and the nights are even shorter).


and now, a short ode to my son's belly button:

my baby has the cutest belly button i have ever seen. i love his belly button.

baking with my big girl

while danny, ellie and henry took a nap after church, abbey and i made cookies!

since we never know how long henry will sleep, i thought we'd make cake mix cookies. there's only three ingredients so they go together fast. and you don't really have to measure anything, so there's only a bowl and a spoon to wash. perfect.

i pre-broke the eegs and beat them in a disposable cup so that abbey would be able to dump all the ingredients in without any help. she mixed a lot on her own, but i helped her a little toward the end (the crisco makes the dough pretty stiff).

she loved rolling the dough into balls, she said it was like chocolate play dough. she got extra excited when she found out we were rolling her balls in powdered sugar. abbey's a big fan of sugar.

being the mean mom that i am, i made her help me clean up the kitchen while the cookies baked. i told her it was part of the fun of baking, and since she's only 4, she believed me. abbey washed off the counter while i washed the dishes.

the cookies turned out great, nice and chewy, and abigail was so proud of herself! we both ate 3 (!) with a big glass of milk. i miss having abbey be a baby, and it makes me sad that she's growing up so fast, but i really enjoy all the new activities that we're able to do together now that she's a "big girl".

a trip to walgreens, i mean, the north pole...

santa took a break from preparing for christmas to make a special trip to the walgreens that's down the street from my house. since he was in the neighborhood, we threw the kids' duds on and took them down to see him. we didn't tell them where we were going, we thought it would be a really fun surprise to walk into the store and see santa, ta da! not so much...

the girls were terrified of that jolly old elf. abbey wouldn't even take the candy cane he tried to give her. luckily, there wasn't a line, so we took our time and chatted with santa a little (giving the girls a chance to warm up to him) before we took our picture. abbey didn't want to sit in his lap so she stood next to him. ellie didn't have that luxury, i plopped her down on his knee and she lost it. it was so sad. we made silly faces and encouraged them to smile while santa's helper snapped pictures. abbey didn't cry. ellie tried not to cry. henry screamed. it was a memory.

once we were done and out of the store the girls were finally excited about santa. abbey was a little worried that she didn't tell him what she wanted, but she turned down my offer to go back in the store and tell him. we decided to write him a letter instead. on the way home we stopped at mcdonalds (yuck, but the kids love it) and got happy meals (which we haven't done since last spring).

even though it was a little traumatic, it was still a really fun day!

mmm...waffles

happy december 1st! i'm so excited that it's christmas time again, i can't wait to celebrate with my kiddos. my goal for this month is to do something christmasy with the girls every day. i think that it will be a fun way for us to get ready for christmas, but also a good way for me to spend some time with the girls sans baby. so, this morning, we celebrated the first of december with these bad boys:


they're gingerbread waffles. are you jealous? you should be. these taste gorgeous!

they were a little bit more involved than i expected (i didn't read all the way through the recipe before i made them) and they took a little more effort than i like to put into a 7am breakfast, but, oh, they were so worth it! i can't say enough how yummy these were! we ate them hot with whipped cream on top (if you hadn't already guessed that).

we enjoyed these so much that i want you to enjoy them, too! find the recipe here, make them for your kids, enjoy the taste of christmas and a special memory. oh, and don't forget to come back and tell me how much you love these. ;D